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Personally, I've chosen deliberately to make Eileen stronger than she appears in Snape's one memory... It's just one example. I have Tobias with an abusive streak, but Eileen will fight back verbally (and in a few cases physically or magically, to protect Severus and herself). Were I to write her like that (I didn't include that in my earlier post; I should have, though) how can you see her and Severus' relationship?

A blank and/or emotionless stare is indicative of many things, including brain injury or a mental illness of some kind, such as PTSD, which someone can get in a number of ways, including severe bullying in school and combat operations. Snape didn't seem to be particularly emotionless as a 16 year old - in fact, to me he doesn't seem to be particularly emotionless *at all*, so much as tightly controlled. Harry regards him as cold and emotionless but he's very rarely accurate in his characterisation of Snape.

Further, I feel it necessary to point out that the *exact* players of that scene have not been identified - Occam's Razor would dictate most likely Eileen and Tobias, but this is not known for sure, and a number of people have speculated it was Eileen and someone else (her father or brother, perhaps) that is reasonably as likely. Also - nobody was being struck.

Originally Posted by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

. . . suddenly Harry's mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner . . .

"Shouting" and "beating" are not the same thing, and while it isn't necessarily excusable, we have no evidence whatsoever that Tobias ever raised his hand to Eileen - or his son for that matter. Was he verbally/mentally/emotionally/psychologically abusive? Possibly - evidence such as Snape's behaviour and his viciously sharp tongue would even lean that towards *probably*, but while verbal, emotional, mental and psychological abuse can leave just as (or even in some cases and ways *more*) damaging than physical or sexual abuse - but as my mother says, "don't borrow trouble".

We don't know the disposition of Snape's parents - they could be both alive, both dead, one of each. The wizarding world seems to have a rather high prevalence of violent death, particularly in the years of the wars, so even if we assume they are both dead we don't know from what causes. It's entirely possible that Eileen was killed for being a blood-traitor, whether that was by her family or Death Eaters. If it was by her family, surely that damaged a (presumably) young Severus, if it were by Death Eaters, and he saw or heard it, surely THAT would have damaged him. If Eileen were dead, it's safe to say that Tobias was ill-equipped to be a single-parent in the early 1960s - much less of a "special-needs" child, which - a wizard - when being raised by a Muggle, most certainly qualifies. And nevermind that it's a particularly *brilliant* child with someone unusual interests - a child who surely would be angry at his father for not properly defending his mother. Further, IF the remainder of the Prince family were unwelcoming of Tobias and the ill-begotten filthy half-breed child of such a marriage, that, too, could damage him and be as equally tragic and equally painful to Severus without having to have Tobias - and ONLY Tobias - necessarily be the villain.

Also, I feel quite compelled to point out that many times throughout the books, witches and/or wizards marry Muggles, who are seemingly completely ignorant to their spouses magical abilities. I think this is probably a Ministry mandate, due to the prevalence (and frank STUPIDITY) of it - but it happened not only with Merope Gaunt (who inarguably had other reasons for concealing her situation), but also Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas (although Dean seems to be utterly unaware of this). Given that we've seen a split-second snippet of a scene, which was utterly out of context, it could *just* as easily be argued that Severus, who was about the right age to start having random demonstrations of uncontrolled magic, did something that he couldn't explain, and that *that's* the moment that Eileen chose to explain that she's basically been living a lie this whole time . . . ." . . . and oh, by the way, dear, you, Severus and I are all huge targets of this renegade fanatical terrorist faction who would like to kill us all and know how to find us because our wedding was announced in the Wizarding paper. Would you like some pudding?" Quite frankly, probably 95% of the people on this board would start screaming in such an instance. I know I would.

With regards to Severus' speech patterns when speaking to his mother, someone I know wrote an excellent theory that Snape is a terribly lower-middle-class lad, and that his overly formal speech is indicative of him trying to fit in with a *far* more well-to-do crowd than he could have otherwise. You know, a bunch of rich, swotty purebloods, for example.

Although it is entirely plausible that Severus was never beat by Tobias, in another story of mine, he was. I'm trying to stay within my own version of the Snape household; thus I make Tobias the way I do.

But I like what you said about young Snape's speech patterns and I'll try that. Thanks.

I'm writing on a one-shot about Snape (his POV) and basically what he did involving Dumbledore & the death of Lily and James. My question is, do you think he could feel guilt about Lily and James' death, more specifically, James'? He hated James, we know that, but do you think he is capable of feeling any sort of remorse or guilt about it?

Dumbledore said that Snape felt remorseful after he told Voldemort about the prophecy. I think that Snape is loyal to Dumbledore and told him the truth, so I believe he did feel guilty about James's death, even though he didn't like him. He could have prevented the deaths by not telling Voldemort about the prophecy, so if he is really on the good side, I think he'd feel some kind of guilt.

With your story, I guess it depends on whether you think he's loyal to Dumbledore or Voldemort. If you think he's evil, then he probably wouldn't feel guilty for telling Voldie about the prophecy.

I agree with everything JBtV said, and would like to append this one thing.

Snape (supposedly, there is some debate about this, but I'll go ahead and take it at face value), had a life debt to James. Dumbledore later tells Harry that Pettigrew has a life debt to HIM (Harry), and that it is magic at it's most powerful (I think that was a quote -I am at a friends and don't have the books in front of me but it was in Order of the Phoenix and if you need the exact quote let me know and I'll PM it to you when I get home - anyway, back to life-debts).

it is possible that Snape may not have *necessarily* - even if he were truly Dumbledore's man - felt remorse for the death of James more or less at his hands, but felt the remorse *for the consequences he suffered (or would suffer) as a result of failing to uphold his debt. I.e. "I don't really regret the fact that he's dead, I regret that his being dead condemns me to to an eternity of hellfire and brimstone".

Um, if that doesn't make sense, poke me in PM and I'll try to 'splain.

I think that would be possible. If Snape were to realize that he now has this debt forever on his concience I think it would make him angry.

There are also people who think that he would be upset about the death of Lily (whether he loved her or not) and possibly Harry (as long as he didn't see him as a 'James clone' from day one) but not James. I think that whatever you need for your fiction would work. Really you could have him feel guilty/not guilty about any of them and it would still fit, depending on your view of Snape.

Get out of my brain! I have him apprenticing under a Roman Potions Mistress. *back!*

Um, it's not entirely implausible. He seems to have a reasonable command of Latin by his fifth year, judging by his ability to compose spells. What I'd stay away from his having him speak Italian AND German AND Russian AND French AND Arabic AND Swedish AND Hindi AND Gaelic AND Spanish AND Mandarin AND Korean AND - you get the point. (Even though my own husband does actually speak 14 languages so that's not *entirely* unheard of)